


Cityglow

by Mertiya



Series: 450 nm vs 750 nm [1]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - After College/University, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Explicit Language, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Graduate School, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 10:26:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6113615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which David Washington makes a new friend and rescues a kitten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cityglow

It was freezing cold outside, and the wind was whipping the snow so hard that it was almost horizontal, but Wash didn’t care. He wanted to run and run and run, away from the stacks of half-graded exams, away from the unfinished lines of code staring accusingly at him from the screen of his laptop, away from his whole, shitty, goddamn life. The wind stung his cheeks as he ran, and the slushy snow that he kicked up soaked into the bottom of his pant legs. He passed the research park, waded his way through the sludgy mud that was all that currently existed of the reclaimed prairie and had finished two loops around his apartment complex before he even slowed down.

            Pausing for a moment in the lee of one of the buildings, he stared up with a sigh at the lighted windows above him. There was something very intimate about the simple, shuttered golden oblongs. Even though he didn’t know what was going on inside, even though they were probably full of lonely graduate students just like him, he still felt walled away in a way that made him ache, bone-deep, with loneliness.

            Above him, the clouds were tinted pearly-rose, almost as light as day. Carolina called it _cityglow_ , and the rest of them had picked it up from her, even though if you looked it up on Wikipedia it turned out to be called _skyglow_ instead. So many lights, so many little oblongs of quiet little stories, of people together. And here he was, Friday night, and all alone.

            _You’re being Agent Melodrama again_. That particular nickname had started after they’d turned on James Bond during an epic forty-eight hour lab code-in, trying to stay awake. Maine had never let him live it down. Wash paused, instinctively reaching for his phone, wanting to text his friend—but he’d left his phone in the apartment, and anyway, Maine probably wouldn’t answer anyway. He had a strong urge to put a fist through the wall, but he didn’t really want to wind up in the emergency room with a broken hand.

            Eventually, he turned away and began to walk back out into the prairie. The wind was picking up even more, if that was possible, and he had to squint against the tears building up in his eyes. Down the road, he caught sight of a short smear of color bending down in front of one of the large, old drainage pipes. Passing it a few minutes later, he realized it was a child in an oversized green-and-purple winter coat, on his knees in the snow. Wash almost kept walking, but it was cold out and late, so at the very last minute, he paused with a sigh, and said, “Kid, are you all right?”

            The child turned rapidly and put a finger on his lips, then beckoned hopefully at Wash, who took a few confused steps forward. “Look,” the child whispered, pointing down the drainage pipe. If it hadn’t been for the brightness of the cityglow, he wouldn’t have been able to see it, but there, right down at the end where the pipe turned sideways, was a small, miserable-looking bundle of pale orange fur. “I been tryin’ to get him out,” the boy explained. “I don’t wanna crawl down there. If I get mud on my coat, my dad will kill me.”

            Washington blinked for a minute. It couldn’t be that hard to coax out a cat, right? He had a vague memory of crouching as a child, hand outstretched, saying, “ _Here_ , kitty, kitty, kitty.” They came every time, sidling up to nose at his hand and butt against his leg. Wash stretched out a hand. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,” he said. His voice echoed eerily down the pipe. The cat stared at him. It did not move.

            “I tried that a bunch,” the boy said, sitting back on his heels to let Wash have more access to the pipe. “I think he’s scared.”

            “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,” Wash tried again. The cat responded by opening its wide, pink mouth and letting out a loud, wailing meow. “Don’t even think about it,” Wash said to it. “Just get out here.” _Meowwww_. Still no movement. “I’m not crawling down there to get you,” Wash said out loud. “Come _here_ , kitty, kitty, kitty.”

            “It must be so cold,” the little boy said, his teeth chattering in apparent sympathy.

            There was no way. There was a half inch of freezing sludge on the bottom of the pipe, and Wash would have to go down it on his hands and knees, if not his stomach. He’d freeze.

            The cat meowed again, plaintive and eerie. Did it sound slightly weaker? “Fuck,” Wash groaned, forgetting the small ears next to him. “Okay, okay. Kid, if I don’t come back—call 911, I guess?” He was on his knees in chilly water before he got a reply. “Mother _fucker_!” It was even colder than he’d expected, and aching pain spiked through his hands and knees.

            He started forward and immediately banged his head on the top of the pipe. Groaning, he went down on his elbows and started wriggling forward. By the time he’d made it to within a few feet of the cat, his legs and feet were entirely in the pipe, and he was shivering violently. “H-H-Here, k-kitty,” he said, holding out a hand again. Once again, the reply he received was a sad meow, and the kitten took a few steps backward away from him. Wash tried to facepalm, missed, and went facedown into the slush. He jerked back a moment later, teeth now chattering desperately, just in time to hear another plaintive meow and feel a rough little tongue brush across his upturned fingers.

            Blinking what felt like ice cubes out of his eyes, he stared at the bedraggled orange kitten that was now, finally, within reach. He slid one hand up and scratched behind its ear with a finger, and it shivered and butted at the palm of his hand. It seemed to be a little more calmed down now, so that when he curled his hand around it, it didn’t scratch or bite, it just settled down into the palm of his hand. Now he just had to get back out.

            This turned out to be somewhat more difficult than getting in had been. For one thing, he had a kitten in his hand that he didn’t want to disturb, and for another, it was much harder to get purchase. Grunting, he tried to wriggle backwards, and managed to hook his feet around the bottom of the pipe. Just a little farther. He felt a sudden touch against his ankles, and kicked out instinctively, hearing a sudden yelp. Damn. He hoped he hadn’t caught the kid in the face.

            It only took a few more minutes before he managed to get back out, tired and chilled through. The little boy was standing waiting for him and didn’t appear to be hurt. “Got him,” he said exhaustedly, sitting up and cradling the sopping wet kitten to his chest. Once he’d gotten his breath back, he unzipped his jacket and tucked it inside, hoping it would stay warmer that way, even though the front of the jacket was soaked. “Do you need me to take you home?”

            “Can I come with you and pet the kitten?” the little boy asked.

            “Um,” Wash hedged. “I think you should probably check with your parents first.”

            The boy sighed noisily. “Yeah,” he said. “Dad would probably yell at me. Maybe I can visit this weekend. Where do you live?”

            “Um, apartment 217 in building 3.”

            “Oh cool! We’re in 117. We can walk back together.”

            As they started back, Washington wondered what you were supposed to say to a nine or ten-year-old, but the child wasn’t overly talkative. He just slouched along beside Wash, every so often asking, “is the kitty okay?” Every time he did, Washington felt his heart thump with concern, and he checked, but the kitten lay patiently in the hand beneath his jacket. By the time they had reached the apartment buildings, it was even purring slightly.

            “Bye, I guess,” the kid said, pausing outside the door of 117. “Oh, I’m Junior, by the way.”

            “David Washington,” Wash said automatically. “Just call me Wash. I’ll see you around, Junior.”

            Junior flashed him a brilliant smile before heading into his apartment. Wash shivered, realized he was still intensely cold, and raced up the steps to his own apartment, where it took him several tries to unlock to door, one-handed and with fingers that were numb with cold.

            He started shedding clothing as soon as he’d made it inside, dropping his wet shirt and jeans into the laundry basket and pulling on his blissfully warm, dry grey hoody and the only clean pair of jeans he had left. Then he headed into the bathroom and found a towel, which he wrapped the kitten in as he headed to his computer, where he sat down and looked up “how to take care of a kitten,” still one-handed.

            The kitten wriggled against his arm in the towel, and at first he thought it was restless, but it turned out to be just trying to make itself more comfortable. So Washington spent a few minutes browsing the internet.   A quick glance told him it might not be a full-grown cat, but it wasn’t a young kitten either; the eyes were open, and it had the sort of long-legged gangly look of an adolescent animal. So, maybe try three to six months old? That meant feeding it cat food (which he didn’t have) or tuna fish (which, thanks to his habit of eating nothing but sandwiches, he did.)

            The kitten turned out to be quite hungry—it made its way rapidly and ravenously through almost an entire package of the pre-packaged (but plain) chopped tuna fish. Washington’s instinct to give it a bowl of milk was curtailed by the internet’s usual wisdom, and he found a bowl and gave it water instead. He could go out and get it a proper food dish tomorrow, make an appointment with the vet—

            He shook his head. Had he really just _decided_ to keep it? Maybe he shouldn’t. True, he was living in pet-friendly apartments, but—Washington stalled. He didn’t really have any logical reasons _not_ to adopt the cat, just a sort of weary persistent notion that something would go wrong. Well, he could worry about it in the morning, he supposed. Guiltily, he looked at the as-yet-ungraded stack of homework papers, but it wasn’t happening. He was too cold, too tired, too bone-weary. What was the point, anyway? He’d have to start from scratch, his thesis was—

            Washington pressed a knuckle to his forehead. Time for bed. Not time to go into the same old loop of recriminations and desperation he’d been falling into for months now. Too tired. No point. He took one of the pillows and one of the blankets he usually slept with and put them together into a makeshift bed for the kitten, which he set down in his bedroom near the air mattress he slept on so he could keep an eye on it if he needed to, then finally removed the kitten from his arm and tucked it into the blankets. It stared at him with bright blue eyes for a moment before curling up, nose to tail.

            He showered and brushed his teeth on autopilot before pulling on the boxers and t-shirt that doubled as pajamas. Turning out the light in the bedroom didn’t do much—the room had no curtains, and even though it faced away from the street, the cityglow was bright against the clouds, keeping the room in a kind of pale grey haze.

            Shutting his eyes didn’t help, because he knew it was there. It had been there the whole time, just waiting for him to let his guard down again. Waiting for him to think about all the things he didn’t have. Washington curled onto his side, fighting against the hollow ache in the pit of his belly, fighting the tears that overflowed and trickled down the side of his face anyway. The aching loneliness ballooned outward, and he couldn’t stifle the sob that ripped its way out of his throat.

            There was a soft sound from behind the bed, a tiny, plaintive echo of the noise he’d made. Then the pitter-patter of tiny feet on the floor, a scratching sound, and suddenly warm fur against his face, whiskers tickling his chin. The kitten had abandoned its nest. “No,” Wash said hoarsely. “Hey—you were supposed to sleep over there.” It was purring now, and its paws kneaded at the pillow beside his head, before it curled up triumphantly beside him, a small orange ball of fluff. Washington sighed and laughed. “Okay, sleep here then,” he said, scratching it gently behind its ears. The purring intensified, and he found himself smiling. Fuck everyone else’s perfect, golden windows. Countless numbers of things might have gone wrong in his life lately, but at least now there was one that was going totally, completely right.


End file.
